Aboleth Group - "More balls for the necklace" - LMOP Session 14
13th Nov 2019, 7:45 – 11:45pm
In-game timeline: Start of session, day 11. End of session, day 13.
We find our “Heroes” fully rested in the town of Phandalin, after having confronted “Sildar” to find that he wasn’t the real “Sildar”, but a doppelganger! After defeating the doppelganger, they once again rescued Sildar from the cellar and all is well once again in the town of Phandalin….. or is it?
Keen to push on, the party decide to head out towards Conyberry and try to get the banshee Agatha to answer Sister Garaele’s query about what happened to Bowgentle’s spellbook. So keen they were to press on, that they didn’t even stop to “update their character sheets” after their long rests. Tut, tut.
The trip to Conyberry took a couple of days – uneventful, though Esme was sure she spotted something in the nearby woods. The party were all a little on edge, not helped by the realisation that there were doppelgangers around, who they now know can appear to look exactly like a friend or foe, and who can read minds. Trust is running thin in the group.
They arrive at Conyberry as the sun goes down, but decide to press on into the town in darkness, rather than risk another night on the road. This plan is abandoned fairly quickly, however, when, not wishing to draw attention to themselves by using a light source, Derrick and Pruni stumbled and struggled on the rough ground in the darkness. Tying some child reins to Derrick was a humorous, though not very useful, tactic, and eventually the group camped in the ruined walls of an old farmhouse. Once again that night, Esme thought she heard something in the nearby woods, but, on checking it out, the group found nothing.
The following morning was bright and cheerful, and they headed into what they assumed was the town of Conyberry – though there was not much left of it. The town was just a set of ruins, many decades, if not centuries, old. Hunting for signs of a “LAIR” that could be the home of a banshee, Mallorn spotted a makeshift shelter in the distance. Approaching the shelter, the group saw that it was manned by a gnome with a friendly smile, but a very strange accent, which he abandoned in a hurry when Mallorn couldn’t stop laughing at it.
A sign by the shelter stated that this was the place to ‘check in’ for Agatha, and the gnome, Gribald, cheerily explained that he was a friend of Agatha, and that most people hand their gifts for Agatha over to him, he checks with Agatha that she approves of the gift and will see the questioner, and then he would return to lead them to the banshee. He seemed fine with the idea that the group would bypass this process and head to Agatha on their own, but warned that this did not bode well for other people in the past!
This process led to much discussion within the party. Esme didn’t trust him one bit. Derrick was a bit warmer towards Gribald, and was less trusting of Esme’s seemingly-new bloodthirsty attitude. Pruni and Mallorn were undecided. Gribald got nervous when he overheard Esme’s suggestion to “just kill him!”, and got even more jumpy when Mallorn started to cast a spell (detect magic, which didn’t reveal anything magic about Gribald).
Eventually (and I mean “eventually”…) the party decided to go with the process, but rather than risk the silver comb that was given to them by Sister Garaele to gift to Agatha, they would instead give Gribald the silver necklace that was Derrick’s mother’s. Yep, rather than risk a small comb of minimal value, both financial and sentimental, they instead risked a treasured heirloom of the “Trebuchet” family, which looked like it was worth more than the comb. It was a plan worthy of Baldric.
Gribald took the necklace and promised to be back in 15 minutes with a Yes or No from Agatha, and headed off into the woods. The party waited. And waited. And waited some more. When it was clear that Gribald was not coming back, and they had lost the necklace, Derrick swore vengeance upon Gribald. Mallorn just swore. Esme said “I told you so”.
The party headed into the woods to find Agatha’s LAIR on their own. And they soon did find it in the woods – a basic structure formed primarily from the branches of trees, but which contained some sparse furniture of Elven origin. Once inside the structure, Agatha the banshee appeared to them – a ghostly, spectral form of an elven woman who appeared initially to be beautiful, but when her full visage was revealed she was shown to be a hideous corruption of a pretty elf. Derrick was awestruck, and not in a good way, and for once was unable to speak – the others were thankful for that. As the nearest of Agatha’s kin, Mallorn did the talking.
Being very respectful and polite, and speaking in Elvish, Mallorn offered the silver comb in exchange for answering a question. Agatha, inspected the comb and was pleased – she agreed to answer their question about what happened to Bowgentle’s spellbook that was once in her possession, centuries ago.
Having got the answer to Sister Garaele’s question, the party decided to try their luck, and offered a nice set of earrings in exchange for another question being answered. The earrings were quite impressive, and seemed to suit Agatha’s once-beautiful looks – her colour scheme was “autumn” and the gold of the earrings blended in with those colours SO well – and she agreed. Mallorn asked about the four keys to the Forge of Spells, and Agatha answered with information about what each key was (a key, a command word, a magical seal and a gadget) and what they were for (unlocking the back door to the mine, dispelling a protective barrier, dispelling a guardian and getting the Forge to work, respectively), though she didn’t know the current whereabouts of any of the keys.
Thanking Agatha, the group left and resumed their cursing of Gribald’s name.
A vote was then cast as to where to go next. Pruni wanted to head to Old Owl Well, where undead have been recently reported. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the group wanted to visit Wyvern Tor and clear out the annoying orcs that were supposedly holed up there, with a view to getting the 100gp reward. The Tor was not marked on their map, but they could see it in the far distance – probably a day’s walk away. So off they went.
Heading cross-country, they reached the base of the Tor at the end of the afternoon. They came upon a post by the side of a track which seemed to lead up the hill. On the post was pinned a notice offering a reward for information about a couple of dwarves. Eyes turned to Esme as she pointed out that the notice could apply to absolutely anybody. Any dwarf anyway. Any female dwarf with red hair, at least. And a large rear end. So why was everyone looking at her?
At that point, in the distance, Derrick caught sight of a lone orc, filling water into buckets from a nearby stream, and then carefully heading up the hill with the filled buckets, obviously trying his best not to spill any water, which was difficult as he had a very pronounced limp.
Derrick pointed this out to the others, and Esme immediately set off to kill the orc. Surprised once again at Esme’s bloodlust, Derrick managed to grab hold of her and tried to pull her back, but she broke free and ran after the lone, disabled, dishevelled orc – soon catching up with it and immediately launching into an attack with her warhammer, despite its unarmed state. One hit, and the orc fell, unconscious.
As the others arrived, they managed to just about persuade Esme to not kill the orc, but get some information from it. Reluctantly, she agreed, and brought the orc round. Pruni looked very intimidating, all almost-3-foot of her, and, after making a strangely unexpected enquiry about his clan back home, she extracted the information that there was about 10 or so orcs in the Tor. She was about to get more information from the frightened orc when he asked if she was going to let him go if he answered her questions. Untrained in the complexities of interrogation techniques, Pruni answered “No, I doubt it”, causing the orc to clam up and refuse to say anything more. So Esme killed him. His name was Grok, by the way, in case anyone was interested.
Heading up the hill, expecting to face around 10 orcs, Pruni was sent scouting ahead and reported seeing one orc on watch outside the entrance to a cave system in the hill. She was sent away again to try to take him out, using her “assassin-type skills”. Which she did. In a most effective way. With one perfectly placed shot from her crossbow, while hidden in cover, she not only killed him with one single bolt, but also managed to thread his testicle on the bolt and have the bold deflect off the stone behind him and return to her hand, testicle attached, ready for threading on her now incredibly gruesome and very smelly “testicle necklace”. The assassin in Pruni “Testicular Terror” was indeed awakened.
Esme rushed towards the entrance, followed closely by the others. She seemed to balk a little at the two dwarven heads on spikes at the entrance to the cave and the banners fluttering below them, and pushed on, with others trying to slow her down. Surprisingly, given her single-minded drive to kill more orcs, Esme did manage to spot a basic alarm system in the cave entrance, and they did manage to avoid it. However, when further on they tried to be stealthy, her clattering and banging, and Derricks tripping over rocks on the floor did seem to echo around the caverns. They decided to light a torch so that Derrick and Pruni could actually see.
With all that banging and crashing, it was no surprise to anyone except Esme and Pruni that as soon as they reached a turning, a couple of javelins came flying towards them, hitting Pruni. The fight was on!
The orcs were throwing javelins down a narrow corridor, whilst our “Heroes” responded with ranged attacks of their own – magic missiles from Mallorn and sacred flames from Esme both hitting their mark. As the orcs used up their javelins, they pushed towards the party, engaging them in hand to hand combat. More orcs arrived, though the group were taking them down with some good hits, but both Esme and Derrick were being battered by the orcs’ greataxes. And then. Guess what? An OGRE appears! SHITTTT!
The ogre smashes his club into Esme and she responds by casting bane on him. Unfortunately, before it can have any effect, Esme is knocked unconscious by the next orc attack. The Ogre bashes Derrick, who saves himself with an effective use of a shield spell. Mallorn is busy effectively casting shards of ice at the obvious leader of the orcs, Brughor, but is taking damage himself. Derrick and Pruni focus on the ogre, but Derrick takes a vicious hit from its club. Mallorn has to stop attacking the leader and run over to Esme (narrowly avoiding an attack of opportunity in the process) to tip a healing potion down her throat, as she was close to death. This brought her back to consciousness, and she immediately boosted her health by calling upon her God and channelling her divinity.
Meanwhile Pruni and Derrick continued to seriously impact the health of the ogre, and, luckily, the remaining orcs were going wide with their attacks. Another massive hit on Derrick from the ogre was averted with his last use of his shield spell, but the remaining orcs managed to get hits on Esme and Derrick, bringing Derrick down in the process. With some luck, and a non-small amount of skill, Mallorn aimed a perfectly timed ray of frost up Brughor’s nose, which burst through his skull and killed him, but Mallorn had to immediately turn his attention to the orc who had just knocked Derrick unconscious. Pruni got another excellent hit on the ogre and this, finally, brought the ogre down.
With just two orcs still standing, but only three members of the party conscious, and they themselves were not looking too spritely, Esme called upon her God to help them with a Prayer of Healing. In a never-to-be-seen-again reaction from her deity (i.e. the DM and Esme didn’t read the spell’s casting time properly, but now they know!), he responded immediately and cured the party, including recovering Derrick from consciousness, which was lucky as he was VERY close to death. Mallorn managed to take down the final two orcs, ending a very impressive fight from the elvish wizard in the pointy hat (4 orcs killed!). The party had survived. Though only just.
And so we leave our “Heroes”, standing in a cavern surrounded by 7 dead orcs and one dead ogre. Esme and Derrick both recovering from their near-death experiences, and Pruni reeling from actually taking damage in a fight, and becoming really quite unhealthy for a while. Mallorn is equally reeling from realising that ray of frost can actually kill, rather than just draw a small amount of blood!
Maybe the Old Owl Well would have been a better option after all.
In-game timeline: Start of session, day 11. End of session, day 13.
We find our “Heroes” fully rested in the town of Phandalin, after having confronted “Sildar” to find that he wasn’t the real “Sildar”, but a doppelganger! After defeating the doppelganger, they once again rescued Sildar from the cellar and all is well once again in the town of Phandalin….. or is it?
Keen to push on, the party decide to head out towards Conyberry and try to get the banshee Agatha to answer Sister Garaele’s query about what happened to Bowgentle’s spellbook. So keen they were to press on, that they didn’t even stop to “update their character sheets” after their long rests. Tut, tut.
The trip to Conyberry took a couple of days – uneventful, though Esme was sure she spotted something in the nearby woods. The party were all a little on edge, not helped by the realisation that there were doppelgangers around, who they now know can appear to look exactly like a friend or foe, and who can read minds. Trust is running thin in the group.
They arrive at Conyberry as the sun goes down, but decide to press on into the town in darkness, rather than risk another night on the road. This plan is abandoned fairly quickly, however, when, not wishing to draw attention to themselves by using a light source, Derrick and Pruni stumbled and struggled on the rough ground in the darkness. Tying some child reins to Derrick was a humorous, though not very useful, tactic, and eventually the group camped in the ruined walls of an old farmhouse. Once again that night, Esme thought she heard something in the nearby woods, but, on checking it out, the group found nothing.
The following morning was bright and cheerful, and they headed into what they assumed was the town of Conyberry – though there was not much left of it. The town was just a set of ruins, many decades, if not centuries, old. Hunting for signs of a “LAIR” that could be the home of a banshee, Mallorn spotted a makeshift shelter in the distance. Approaching the shelter, the group saw that it was manned by a gnome with a friendly smile, but a very strange accent, which he abandoned in a hurry when Mallorn couldn’t stop laughing at it.
A sign by the shelter stated that this was the place to ‘check in’ for Agatha, and the gnome, Gribald, cheerily explained that he was a friend of Agatha, and that most people hand their gifts for Agatha over to him, he checks with Agatha that she approves of the gift and will see the questioner, and then he would return to lead them to the banshee. He seemed fine with the idea that the group would bypass this process and head to Agatha on their own, but warned that this did not bode well for other people in the past!
This process led to much discussion within the party. Esme didn’t trust him one bit. Derrick was a bit warmer towards Gribald, and was less trusting of Esme’s seemingly-new bloodthirsty attitude. Pruni and Mallorn were undecided. Gribald got nervous when he overheard Esme’s suggestion to “just kill him!”, and got even more jumpy when Mallorn started to cast a spell (detect magic, which didn’t reveal anything magic about Gribald).
Eventually (and I mean “eventually”…) the party decided to go with the process, but rather than risk the silver comb that was given to them by Sister Garaele to gift to Agatha, they would instead give Gribald the silver necklace that was Derrick’s mother’s. Yep, rather than risk a small comb of minimal value, both financial and sentimental, they instead risked a treasured heirloom of the “Trebuchet” family, which looked like it was worth more than the comb. It was a plan worthy of Baldric.
Gribald took the necklace and promised to be back in 15 minutes with a Yes or No from Agatha, and headed off into the woods. The party waited. And waited. And waited some more. When it was clear that Gribald was not coming back, and they had lost the necklace, Derrick swore vengeance upon Gribald. Mallorn just swore. Esme said “I told you so”.
The party headed into the woods to find Agatha’s LAIR on their own. And they soon did find it in the woods – a basic structure formed primarily from the branches of trees, but which contained some sparse furniture of Elven origin. Once inside the structure, Agatha the banshee appeared to them – a ghostly, spectral form of an elven woman who appeared initially to be beautiful, but when her full visage was revealed she was shown to be a hideous corruption of a pretty elf. Derrick was awestruck, and not in a good way, and for once was unable to speak – the others were thankful for that. As the nearest of Agatha’s kin, Mallorn did the talking.
Being very respectful and polite, and speaking in Elvish, Mallorn offered the silver comb in exchange for answering a question. Agatha, inspected the comb and was pleased – she agreed to answer their question about what happened to Bowgentle’s spellbook that was once in her possession, centuries ago.
Having got the answer to Sister Garaele’s question, the party decided to try their luck, and offered a nice set of earrings in exchange for another question being answered. The earrings were quite impressive, and seemed to suit Agatha’s once-beautiful looks – her colour scheme was “autumn” and the gold of the earrings blended in with those colours SO well – and she agreed. Mallorn asked about the four keys to the Forge of Spells, and Agatha answered with information about what each key was (a key, a command word, a magical seal and a gadget) and what they were for (unlocking the back door to the mine, dispelling a protective barrier, dispelling a guardian and getting the Forge to work, respectively), though she didn’t know the current whereabouts of any of the keys.
Thanking Agatha, the group left and resumed their cursing of Gribald’s name.
A vote was then cast as to where to go next. Pruni wanted to head to Old Owl Well, where undead have been recently reported. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the group wanted to visit Wyvern Tor and clear out the annoying orcs that were supposedly holed up there, with a view to getting the 100gp reward. The Tor was not marked on their map, but they could see it in the far distance – probably a day’s walk away. So off they went.
Heading cross-country, they reached the base of the Tor at the end of the afternoon. They came upon a post by the side of a track which seemed to lead up the hill. On the post was pinned a notice offering a reward for information about a couple of dwarves. Eyes turned to Esme as she pointed out that the notice could apply to absolutely anybody. Any dwarf anyway. Any female dwarf with red hair, at least. And a large rear end. So why was everyone looking at her?
At that point, in the distance, Derrick caught sight of a lone orc, filling water into buckets from a nearby stream, and then carefully heading up the hill with the filled buckets, obviously trying his best not to spill any water, which was difficult as he had a very pronounced limp.
Derrick pointed this out to the others, and Esme immediately set off to kill the orc. Surprised once again at Esme’s bloodlust, Derrick managed to grab hold of her and tried to pull her back, but she broke free and ran after the lone, disabled, dishevelled orc – soon catching up with it and immediately launching into an attack with her warhammer, despite its unarmed state. One hit, and the orc fell, unconscious.
As the others arrived, they managed to just about persuade Esme to not kill the orc, but get some information from it. Reluctantly, she agreed, and brought the orc round. Pruni looked very intimidating, all almost-3-foot of her, and, after making a strangely unexpected enquiry about his clan back home, she extracted the information that there was about 10 or so orcs in the Tor. She was about to get more information from the frightened orc when he asked if she was going to let him go if he answered her questions. Untrained in the complexities of interrogation techniques, Pruni answered “No, I doubt it”, causing the orc to clam up and refuse to say anything more. So Esme killed him. His name was Grok, by the way, in case anyone was interested.
Heading up the hill, expecting to face around 10 orcs, Pruni was sent scouting ahead and reported seeing one orc on watch outside the entrance to a cave system in the hill. She was sent away again to try to take him out, using her “assassin-type skills”. Which she did. In a most effective way. With one perfectly placed shot from her crossbow, while hidden in cover, she not only killed him with one single bolt, but also managed to thread his testicle on the bolt and have the bold deflect off the stone behind him and return to her hand, testicle attached, ready for threading on her now incredibly gruesome and very smelly “testicle necklace”. The assassin in Pruni “Testicular Terror” was indeed awakened.
With all that banging and crashing, it was no surprise to anyone except Esme and Pruni that as soon as they reached a turning, a couple of javelins came flying towards them, hitting Pruni. The fight was on!
The orcs were throwing javelins down a narrow corridor, whilst our “Heroes” responded with ranged attacks of their own – magic missiles from Mallorn and sacred flames from Esme both hitting their mark. As the orcs used up their javelins, they pushed towards the party, engaging them in hand to hand combat. More orcs arrived, though the group were taking them down with some good hits, but both Esme and Derrick were being battered by the orcs’ greataxes. And then. Guess what? An OGRE appears! SHITTTT!
The ogre smashes his club into Esme and she responds by casting bane on him. Unfortunately, before it can have any effect, Esme is knocked unconscious by the next orc attack. The Ogre bashes Derrick, who saves himself with an effective use of a shield spell. Mallorn is busy effectively casting shards of ice at the obvious leader of the orcs, Brughor, but is taking damage himself. Derrick and Pruni focus on the ogre, but Derrick takes a vicious hit from its club. Mallorn has to stop attacking the leader and run over to Esme (narrowly avoiding an attack of opportunity in the process) to tip a healing potion down her throat, as she was close to death. This brought her back to consciousness, and she immediately boosted her health by calling upon her God and channelling her divinity.
Meanwhile Pruni and Derrick continued to seriously impact the health of the ogre, and, luckily, the remaining orcs were going wide with their attacks. Another massive hit on Derrick from the ogre was averted with his last use of his shield spell, but the remaining orcs managed to get hits on Esme and Derrick, bringing Derrick down in the process. With some luck, and a non-small amount of skill, Mallorn aimed a perfectly timed ray of frost up Brughor’s nose, which burst through his skull and killed him, but Mallorn had to immediately turn his attention to the orc who had just knocked Derrick unconscious. Pruni got another excellent hit on the ogre and this, finally, brought the ogre down.
With just two orcs still standing, but only three members of the party conscious, and they themselves were not looking too spritely, Esme called upon her God to help them with a Prayer of Healing. In a never-to-be-seen-again reaction from her deity (i.e. the DM and Esme didn’t read the spell’s casting time properly, but now they know!), he responded immediately and cured the party, including recovering Derrick from consciousness, which was lucky as he was VERY close to death. Mallorn managed to take down the final two orcs, ending a very impressive fight from the elvish wizard in the pointy hat (4 orcs killed!). The party had survived. Though only just.
And so we leave our “Heroes”, standing in a cavern surrounded by 7 dead orcs and one dead ogre. Esme and Derrick both recovering from their near-death experiences, and Pruni reeling from actually taking damage in a fight, and becoming really quite unhealthy for a while. Mallorn is equally reeling from realising that ray of frost can actually kill, rather than just draw a small amount of blood!
Maybe the Old Owl Well would have been a better option after all.